GOP candidates offer a few new lines on policy, but mostly old stump staples

Share this:

Michele Bachmann speaking during the presidential candidate debate in Ames.

WASHINGTON — Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate started with a plea from the moderators for candidates to move away from their talking points and offer concrete, original answers to the questions.

That spirit of spontaneity lasted a whole 30 seconds, before Michele Bachmann ended her opening statement with her stump speech rallying cry: “Barack Obama, you will be a one-term president!”

Two days before a major benchmark in the presidential nomination process, the Ames Straw Poll, no one expected the candidates to deviate too far from their stated policies and their tried and true slogans. Candidates, by and large, kept the focus on President Obama unless they found an opening to successfully attack one another. They laid out reasonably detailed plans and rushed through their talking points quickly enough to stay under their time limits. And they dispatched with pointed, individualized questions with well-rehearsed ease.

Take, for example, Bachmann’s response to questions about submitting to her husband in the Christian tradition. She let the audience jeer the question before responding, steadily: “It means respect. I respect my husband… We respect each other, we love each other.” It was a well-tailored response to a question the campaign has almost certainly been waiting to come.

Reciting a résuméDebate moderators pressed Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty early in the debate about their economic plans. The two responded with general ease, reciting material that’s been in their stump speeches all year long: attack Obama, offer a solution.

Romney did that by saying the next president should be one with a business background (like his) and offering an abbreviated seven-point plan to kick-start the economy. Pawlenty was asked if his 5 percent growth year-over-year target was “pie in the sky,” and responded with a critique of Obama, a referral to his website, and a quick joke with which Pawlenty staffers were obviously pleased.

REUTERS/Charlie Neibergall

Tim Pawlenty

“Where is Barack Obama on these issues? You can’t find his plans on some of the most pressing financial issues of our country,” he said. “I’ll offer a prize tonight to anybody in this auditorium or anyone watching on television, if you can find Barack Obama’s specific plan on any of those items, I will come to your house and cook you dinner. Or if you prefer I’ll come to your house and mow your lawn. But in case Mitt wins, I’m limiting it to one acre. One acre.”

But for every new line, there were old stump staples.

Pawlenty, for weeks, has been trying to position himself as an experienced candidate with a record of results. On talk shows, before crowds of voters and (twice) in Thursday’s debate, he’s outlined his accomplishments as Minnesota governor thusly: “You will see government spending went from historic highs to historic lows. We appointed conservative justices, transformed the court in a conservative direction. We did health care reform the right way — no individual mandates, no government takeovers and more, and that is the record we will need to beat Barack Obama.”

Bachmann did the same thing, hitting Congress for raising the debt ceiling over her objections and pledging to the audience, “I will not rest until we repeal Obamacare.”

They were campaign-tested lines, and they were ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Pawlenty acts on ‘Obamneycare’June’s New Hampshire debate will be remembered most for Bachmann’s newly-announced candidacy and the unwillingness of Pawlenty to attack Romney’s health care legislation from his days as Massachusetts governor.

But Pawlenty didn’t whiff when asked about “Obamneycare” Thursday, offering his normal critique of the Romney health-care law as one used by President Obama as a model his landmark health-care reform package passed into law last year.

Romney defended his law, saying it was different than Obama’s because the Constitution gives states the rights to establish government services the federal government isn’t able to provide. Obama’s reform, he said, is “a bad law.”

Bachmann, who’s attacked the Obama law as an infringement of individuals’ liberties because it requires citizens purchase health care coverage, said both plans are unconstitutional.

“The government is without authority to compel a citizen to purchase a good or service against their will,” she said. “This is clearly an unconstitutional action whether it’s done on the federal level or the state level.”

Rearing for a fightThursday night’s debate was also different in tone than the one in New Hampshire — the questions were tougher, the mood more serious and the candidates rearing for a fight.

There was at least one rare moment of unity for the candidates. When discussing the best possible debt reduction plans, the moderators asked how many of the candidates would oppose a plan that had a 10-to-1 ratio of budget cuts to spending increases. Every candidate raised a hand, opposing the plan because of the increase in revenues.

Beyond that, the candidates spent the debate jockeying for airtime and soundbites.

Rick Santorum spent much of the first half of the debate trying to convince the moderators to let him answer a question. When the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania was able to do so, he skewered the other candidates, at one point saying Bachmann’s insistence against voting to raise the debt ceiling was “showmanship not leadership.”

Beyond the Bachmann-Pawlenty flap, a clash between Santorum and Texas libertarian Ron Paul provided the most fireworks on the night. The two exchanged barbs on foreign policy and how to best address nuclear weapons in Iran. Paul argued that United States would do well to stay out of foreign conflicts; Santorum was much more hawkish.

Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, attacked the “Mickey Mouse” questions posed by the Fox News moderators (twice) and otherwise turned in a solid, at-times wonky performance, advocating Congress repeal “theDodd-Frank bill. They should repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. They should repeal Obamacare. They should institute Lean Six Sigma across the entire federal government.”

Herman Cain had a forgettable performance and Jon Huntsman, a new candidate who was debating for the first time took a handful of contrarian positions, advocating for civil unions and painting his time as Obama’s ambassador to China as a patriotic citizen serving his country.

“I’m proud of my service to this country,” he said. “If you love this country, you serve her.”

Looming large over the debate: the imminent entry into the race of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who will announce his candidacy Saturday, and the Iowa return of Sarah Palin, who will visit the State Fair on Friday.

But for now, most of the announced candidates are focused squarely on Saturday’s straw poll.

Related Tags:

Comments (4)

The best parts of the debate were the disagreements on the role of the 10th Amendment with regard to Obamacare and the disagreements regarding the national debt and debt ceiling debacle. As usual, Newt was the smartest man in the room.

1. Gingrich
2. Santorum
3. Cain
4. Bachmann

The rest can fold their tents because Saturday, Perry makes them all irrelevant.

Policies? The only Republican policy is to have no policy. Policies require government action, none of these guys think the government should do anything so all they have are non-policies- do less or do nothing.

There isn’t a single leader in the bunch. Everyone of them is a follower. If they were leaders they would have lead the debt negotiations away from gridlock to a solution for all of America not just the fringe. Everyone of them is doing their level best (Pawlenty might be the exception as he can’t figure out who he is) and it turns out following is the thing they all do the best. None of them are fit for office.

“Romney defended his law, saying it was different than Obama’s because the Constitution gives states the rights to establish government services the federal government isn’t able to provide.”

That’s not what he said. He said that the Massachusetts constitution allowed mandatory purchase of health insurance because state constitutions generally allow states to mandate a lot of things, like sending your kids to school or having car insurance. And that their law was right for their citizens given their state budget situation (people getting the government to pay for health care when they could afford it themselves) citing the principle of personal responsibility.

But that was not applicable to the federal government and that mandating a one-size fits all health care system that required purchase of insurance was wrong and violated the 10th Amendment.